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Title: Consequence Chose (2/2)
Part one.
They wound up at the kitchen table not much later, not talking or eating, just sitting across from each other. Reuben ended up breaking the silence, saying to Laurel what he’d wanted to say to June, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t. We couldn’t have tested for it.” They’d run the gamut of screenings before they’d gotten engaged, going all the way down the list in alphabetical order, and some things could turn up in a laboratory and some things couldn’t.
“Laurel, I swear I wouldn’t.”
“Don’t. Don’t blame yourself. It’s happened in my family too.”
“I mean, it runs in my family – what’s James say, first-degree relative or something? You know my brother’s –”
“Rueben, stop.”
“If I’d known anyone would be at risk for it, I wouldn’t…”
“Stop. Just stop.” She took her forehead in her hands, elbows on the counter, the best possible way to keep her head up and not look him in the eye. “This is going to be –” She sighed and started again. “We don’t need you blaming yourself. I know you want to but please don’t. This is going to be hard enough without that.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, not knowing something else to use. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.” She moved to sit next to him, picked up and draped his arm around her as she put her arms around him. “It’s okay.”
“Please don’t promise me.”
“It’s going to be okay.” He shook his head, not knowing why she thought it would, why she was so fine with all this. “It’s going to be fine, Reuben. She’s a gorgeous little girl, she’s so bright and smart, she’s got the best parents and littermates and grandparents in the world and she’s going to be okay. We’ll be okay.”
“You, you don’t,” he started. She cut him off right away.
“No, Reuben. Whatever it is, she’s my daughter, and I’m not going to not do anything if it means not helping her.” She held him tighter. “And that includes feeling sorry for her. Reuben, look at me.” He did, and didn’t see anything to tell him otherwise. “Reuben, I promise I’ll do whatever I can to make sure things turn out good for her.”
“Okay.”
“I need to hear you say that.”
“I promise,” swallowing down his fears and memories, “I promise I’ll do whatever I can for her.”
“Thank you.” She didn’t kiss him, pressing her face against his neck, taking in one breath after another; he buried his nose in her hair and pulled her in closer. He wanted to say she didn’t know what it was like living with someone like June or his brother, how hard it was even when people knew about the condition, but wanted to keep holding her more. So he did, until she tugged him back into bed, where they managed to sleep the last couple of hours until morning, and Laurel could finally shift down to feed everyone.
Reuben sat on the floor with everyone, and scratched Laurel’s ears while their children ate; she sighed and twitched her tail. “Can’t wait for them to wean.” She growled lightly at that; of course she couldn’t. “Solids are going to be a barrel of fun.” She whined, asking him to come in close, and rewarded him for his trouble with a big lick from his chin to his forehead. Grimacing, wiping it off, “Oh, you think you’re so funny now.” She huffed out a laugh and turned her attention back to the kids, and he went back to her ears.
He waited for everyone to be finished and her to shift back up to say, “We’re gonna have to tell our parents eventually.”
She pulled her dress on and went to the kitchen to heat up something. “How about tonight?”
“Yeah, I think I can do that.” Maybe shell-shocked was the best attitude for dealing with this. “Should I call mine first?”
“Probably.”
“They should be home now, but I’ll wait a little while.”
“Might as well. You’ve got a half-day at work, right?”
“All this week and next, then it’s back to full-time. Benefits of senior staff.”
“I’ve gotta get me some of that.”
“You’re a mother. It’s the most senior staff there is.”
-
Reuben knew there was a life before children the same way he knew he’d been an infant: there was proof in the form of eyewitness reports and photographs documentation, and there were vague memories of what had happened, but it didn’t seem real compared to what was happening right now. He guessed, and evidence backed him up, that sleep deprivation and changing diapers and chasing after babies that’d shifted down because they didn’t want to crawl when the could run did a good job of that. Plain and simple, there wasn’t time for him to think about what had happened to his life anymore. If it was a good day, there’d be a few minutes here and there, usually in the shower, but there was too much to worry about and deal with to spend much time contemplating anything. There were too many things that had him smiling when he didn’t mean it, just to keep looking polite, because he knew it wouldn’t do him any good to lose his patience with a total stranger, or worse, someone that had something he needed.
He’d gotten another set of cards printed up – two, actually, one for everyday questions and one just for the ones about June – and they did their job, and getting to know people and make the effort to make friends with them was a little effort that went a long way. But he couldn’t speak to the same people every time he made a call or showed up at the pharmacy, and it didn’t take long for explaining the same things over and over became tiresome instead of irritating or angering. Like today, when he had to duck out of a meeting twenty minutes early because some assistant needed to call him because Laurel’s word wasn’t enough.
He made sure to close his office’s door and take a deep breath before picking the call back up. “Sorry about that. Yes, Reuben Wilson here, what can I do for you?”
“Well, I’m calling on behalf of Dr. Shultz and the appointments you made for next week.”
“The two-month immunizations. What about them?”
“It says here that you’ve set three appointments, but you have four children.”
“Yes, and?”
“I wanted to make sure this wasn’t in error and that you meant four appointments.”
He swore he could hear Caroline’s faint little smile, the exact one he knew to hate from experience, the one that said he’d forgotten he had a fourth child. In terms of smiles he’d learned to hate, it was better than the one that said his daughter was a dog. He sighed, pushed the heel of his free hand against his eye to ward off an incoming headache and resist the temptation to ask if she was new. “No, I meant three. June’s not getting her shots with Dr. Shultz.”
“Oh. I see.”
He sighed again. “I assure you she’s getting her immunizations, and that everything will be up to federal standards and regulations. She just won’t be getting them in your offices.”
“May I ask where she’ll be getting them?”
“No, you may not.” Talking on the phone did have its perks, like being able to grin like an asshole and still sound polite and apologetic. “Is that all?”
“Yes, I believe it is.”
“Thank you.” Reuben didn’t wait to end the call, beeping her away. He took a moment to sit at his desk, stare at the walls, and not think. There were plenty of other parents in the office that he could talk to for most things – Joyce had just gotten back from her own maternity leave last week, and they’d spent nearly twenty minutes talking about bottles, just bottles – but he was the only person he knew of that had to make his daughter’s appointments with a veterinarian. Laurel had spent almost three days calling every vet within driving distance to see if any of them were willing and able to accept what she were asking about, and had been prepared to go as far as New York City itself if that was what it took. She’d finally found a private practice just under an hour away with good traffic, and Reuben pulled his last sick day for the year to drive June over and check Heckl out.
Her waiting room set the tone for the visit before she stepped in: he knew she’d designed the place for the benefit of owners, not parents, but the fact that there wasn’t anything cute or obnoxious on the walls and magazines about things besides domestic animals went a long way towards helping him get over the feeling of failure over having to be here. When her assistant called him to the back and she was ready and waiting for them, but took the time to give him a hefty handshake and say hello before re-sterilizing to examine June, he found himself relaxing even more, and realized she was the best possible choice when June let herself be picked up. “She doesn’t usually do that,” he explained when Heckl said out loud how cooperative her new patient was. “She’s usually fussy about who holds her.”
“Well. I’m really glad you’re letting me hold you, then. Thank you, June, and how are you feeling today? Let me check your ears, this won’t hurt, it’ll be cold but it won’t hurt.” Heckl really knew what she was doing, and kept talking to June instead of at her, not with baby-talk either, and Reuben would’ve been willing to hire her for that alone.
“Have you worked with werewolves before?”
“Yes, four in the years I was with the animal hospital, but you’re the first in my own practice.” She didn’t look up from running a finger over June’s gums and milk teeth.
“And, ah, how long were you with the animal hospital?”
It must’ve been a good time, because that got a smile into her eyes. “Almost twelve years.”
“Well, I can’t say I hope for many more to come your way, but if any do, they’ll be lucky.”
“I appreciate that, thank you.”
-
Whenever he thought about it, Reuben knew it was a waste of time to have kids one after another instead of all at once, and that it’d be kind of boring. Everyone in his family had grown up as part of a litter – the only exception he could think of was his father’s aunt Nina, who’d converted to marry great-uncle George in the early nineteen twenties. He’d have to call one of his brothers-in-law to check, but as far as he knew, it was just her. Otherwise, it was universally litters, always having someone around with you, sharing toys and clothes, birthday cakes and teachers and plans to sneak out of the house at night. Besides, it always seemed a lot easier to grow up all at the same time. Karl sometimes talked about him and his wife having a third kid, and Reuben had to smile polity at that, thinking about how awful it’d been for Laurel in the last couple of months and how it was nice to not to have to go through pregnancy more than once.
Still, he had to concede it’d be easier to coordinate trips and outings for him and Laurel if all four of his children weren’t at the stage when they needed to be watched all the time. If, say, Jeremy and Susan could be decently self-occupying, or old enough for preschool, at the very least going grocery shopping wouldn’t be so hard. Most of the time he and Laurel switched off and one or the other went out on a Sunday to get all the errands done, which doubled as a bit of time alone, but Jeremy didn’t want to nap today and June was hungrier than ever and Abby was going through a phase where she spent as much time shifted down as she could – which was why Reuben had Susan with him today in the produce section. He didn’t know why she was being so well-behaved, but he was willing to reward it with a trip out of the house.
Toting her carrier and diaper bag, pushing the shopping cart, stopping to grab oatmeal, apples, baby-safe non-scented detergent, toothpaste, milk, butter, cucumbers, canned tomatoes, plus doubling back across the store to grab some dental floss and then back to get some canned pumpkin, was tricky to balance but fairly straightforward, and it had to be put to a stop when she realized she was hungry and he had to push everything over to the in-store eating area to get a place to sit down to feed her. She was hungry enough it didn’t take long, and for the millionth time he was thankful all his kids had taken to bottles without fuss. New moons just wouldn’t be possible for Laurel anymore without them.
“Up you go,” he set the towel in place and hefted her up to his shoulder. “Here we are, come on, make your daddy proud, gimme a good – yep, there we go,” the smell of spit-up the same as ever, that sleek sour-sweet scent that only came from the all-milk meals. “There we are, you’ve got more? Oh, don’t tell me there’s still some left, get it out, come on, no? Okay, but you’re staying up there just in case.”
If nothing else, it was nice to sit for a while. He still needed to visit the butcher’s and the pet store – something they’d need to euphemize, or just get the stuff ordered online – plus the hardware store, they needed more light bulbs, and he was about to call Laurel to check if he’d missed writing anything down when someone started to coo at Susan behind his back. That someone turned out to be a girl who looked like she was fresh into college, hiding fake-colored hair behind oversized glasses and wearing a too-gaudy-for-a-grandmother sweater – is that was people that age were wearing these days, and did he have to be worried about that and worse in eighteen years?
“Hey baby, hey baby, who’s a good girl, who’s a good girl?”
“Hello,” he said carefully.
“Your daughter is so cute,” she smiled. “Ah, baby, who’s a cute baby-baby.”
“Thank you.” Turning around to face her, “Her name’s Susan.”
“Susan, what a sweet name. Peek-a-boo!” She hid behind her hands, popping out from behind them two more times before she realized Susan wasn’t responding. “Uh, peek-a-boo?”
Reuben smiled; this was too good. “Oh, we don’t play peek-a-boo.”
“Sorry?”
“It doesn’t work for us. We don’t play it.”
“How…I thought everyone played it. Even, like, people in Australia.”
He grinned. “Well, she can smell you, so she knows if you’re still in the room and just hiding behind a chair or your hands. The, oh, object permanence is something she already knows.”
The girl kept blinking. “Object…she can smell me?”
“Yeah,” he fumbled a bit before pulling out the case – silver polish, that’s right, not on the list but he needed it for the menorah – and flipped it open and handed over a card one-handed. “We’re werewolves. Here you go.”
“Uh?”
Pointing to the card with the case, “That should explain everything.”
“Uh, thanks. I, ah.”
“Wave bye-bye, Susan.” She gurgled low and sharp, telling him she hadn’t liked the girl either. He could probably blame the glasses, definitely blame the casual fear, and kept waving her hand for her. “Wave bye-bye to the little scared lady, bye-bye.”
-
When she saw what he was washing, Abby took a detour over to the sink. “Chicken bits! Can I have some?”
Reuben grinned and turned off the tap, shaking the organs dry before patting them with a paper towel to get the last membranes off. “No, these are for June. You asked for egg salad, remember?”
“Oh.” She thought for a moment before asking, “Can I still have a piece?”
“Sorry, no.” He sealed them up in a plastic baggie and put them into the cooler with the rest of lunch. “Could you go help your mother get the toys ready, please?”
No one could sigh like a four-year-old. “Okay.”
It wasn’t a long drive to Pelham Park in terms of time spent or miles covered, but it was if there were four four-year-olds that needed something to do for every moment of it – which was why he and Laurel spent the whole week planning this daytrip. He could hear her debating about plastic shovels with Susan and Abby, arguing against small trucks with Jeremy, and telling June to go ask her father about it. He was putting the pears in the cooler when she padded into the kitchen with her ears straight up and a doll held tight between her teeth.
“She wants to take it with us!” Laurel yelled.
“Sorry, sweetie.” He crouched down to tug it gently from her; she didn’t let go, just held on gently, dipping her head up and down. “She’d get all wet, and we’d have to put her back in the wash, and she wouldn’t taste good. Could you put her away? We’re leaving soon.” He let go; June pulled her ears flat to the sides and let out a snort before trotting back to her room to put her doll away. She was back a moment later with one of her old wooden teething rods, and he had to turn that one down too, and only got her a little better promising there’d be plenty of stuff to play with once they got there. “We’re bringing plenty of toys for everyone, you don’t need to bring yours.”
She wasn’t satisfied with that, and spent most of the drive sulking in the station wagon’s rumble seat, even with Jeremy back there with her to keep her company. Nobody was happy during the drive, sulking and annoyed for one reason or a hundred others including being four years old, not until they got to the parking lot and they realized how close they were to so much water ready and waiting for them. It was a small miracle they were patient enough for the day’s first sunscreen application.
“Okay, everyone!” Reuben stared at everyone assembled in the shade of the car. “Beach rules: no scent-rolling, if you want to shift up or down let me or your mom know and do it in one of the booths, when we say it’s time to go it’s time to go, don’t eat anything we didn’t bring, we’re not buying anyone ice cream so don’t ask, wait twenty minutes after lunch to get back in the water, and if you’re shifted up you need sunscreen.” He watched the information sink in. “And we’re here to have fun, everybody, so let’s get in the water! Come on!”
It took a bit more than that for everyone to take off running – setting up beach camp, for one, but it still took less than ten minutes between parking the car and everyone getting wet. Susan was the first to dunk herself, swimming lessons paying off, Jeremy and Reuben running in behind, June and Abby hanging back in the waves and splashing each other and Laurel dipping her feet in before setting up the towels for a bit of sunbathing and reading. When she found a big green piece of beach glass Susan started hunting it down, running over to Reuben whenever she found a new piece so he could put it in his pockets; he took every bit and kept getting splashed by Jeremy and waved to Laurel, who went back to half-reading and half-watching Abby and June digging in the wet sand, jumping back to watch the waves melt the holes away, and go back to digging. The toys came out a little bit after that, big plastic birthday presents finally getting broken in, and everyone agreed this was time to get some real digging done, and some real building too.
All they made was a huge lump that couldn’t be called a tower or even a pyramid without being overly generous, but they kept putting more and more sand on, noticing the wettest parts slide down the sides and pushing dry sand against the bottom to hold it up. Watching all of his kids working together to do something without him, without any help, made Reuben’s heart sing as they went.
The lump was still standing proud, if somewhat less tall, when Laurel called everyone for lunch. She started taking the food out of the cooler, one bag at a time, “Chicken for Abby, egg for Susan, bits for June, chicken for Jeremy, hummus for Dad and egg for me.” She handed out the sandwiches, pulled a little collapsible silicone bowl out of her bag and poured in June’s lunch, and everyone sat on the beach and didn’t bother with napkins.
It was the perfect afternoon until some beach bum in sandals and an open shirt walked by with his dog, which took one sniff of June’s expensive, organic, free-range chicken organs and started barking loud enough for something four times its size. Little dogs always annoyed Reuben, and he glared at the owner, trying to quiet the fuzzball and seemed to be doing his best. June didn’t do anything flashy or dramatic, just what came naturally to a four-year-old kid who was bugged by someone else: tell them to buzz off. It just so happened June’s way of doing that was to drop her ears, pull her lips back from her teeth, and growl low in her throat, planting her feet and all twenty-eight pounds of pure muscle behind her statement.
He knew he shouldn’t, but Reuben smiled anyway at how fast the fuzzball shut up.
“Dude, get that thing a leash.”
“What?” Everyone stared at the guy who held his dog a little closer.
“At least I’ve got mine on a leash. You know what, I’m calling the –”
“Look, this is,” Reuben reached over to Laurel’s bag, pulled out his case, “I think this is a simple misunderstanding. Here, this should clear things up.” He walked over and held out one of June’s cards; the guy glanced over it, to June, at Reuben, then back to the card. Reuben waved at everyone to stay sitting down and could hear Laurel distributing the pears for dessert, offering to slice them up. He stood his ground, crossed his arms over his chest, and kept staring right at the guy’s face, waiting for him to make eye contact. It took him a while, but the guy managed. “So does that clear it up?”
“Fine.” He didn’t even bother with a smile, just went back to his walk along the beach. Everyone was well into dessert, glad to have the guy gone and forgetting about him as soon as they hit the water again, but Reuben held back with Laurel. He couldn’t shake the way the man had looked at them once he’d read the card, worse than the way he’d first looked at June. He almost wanted to shift down and do something worth jail time, but pushed that aside and chatted with Laurel about her book before encouraging her to go play in the sand for a bit, putting on a good face for his family. So he played in the sand and took Abby’s suit when she wanted to shift down for a bit and helped her back into it when she shifted up for the drive home, helped Susan pick out the three best pieces of glass, agreed that Jeremy had outsplashed him, and told June it was a very good stick she’d found and it’d look good in her room.
On good days it was a fight to get his kids into the shower – they’d done their best to skip baths for good reason – and today it was worse than usual, Jeremy putting up the biggest fuss even after the long day. “But I wanna smell like the beach!”
“I know, I do too, a lot of people do, but you need to take a shower anyway.”
“Why?”
“Well, see…you won’t smell like the beach tomorrow, and it’s important you get clean right now.”
“Why can’t I keep it?”
“You already know the answer. Do you want me to give you the real answer or a fake one?”
“I want to remember the beach.”
“Jeremy,” he crouched down to look him eye-to-eye, “You don’t need smells to remember things. I know they’re good, and they help so much, but we can remember things without our noses.” Jeremy made the face that said he knew his dad was right and didn’t like it. “Come on. You need to get clean to start the day fresh tomorrow.”
“So I can get clean tomorrow.” One last argument.
“No, well, no, you need to get clean now.” He kept pouting, but got into the shower and let his dad turn the water on without much more out of him. Abby and Susan were already in pajamas, thanks to Laurel and their master bathroom, so June followed Jeremy and let her dad help her wash the day out of her fur, closed her eyes and almost purred when he toweled her off, wagging fit to throw her tail off.
She was already asleep when he came to check on her. She’d dropped her stick right at the edge of her bed – a double-firm well-blanketed futon – and Reuben ran his hand down her back and picked it up to look at its grooves, the ones thrown smooth by the waves and fresh-made from her jaws. All she needed to do was give it a lick and she’d taste the saltwater, the sun and the wind, bits of sand and tired sounds, and she’d be right back at the beach for as long as the stick let her remember the day, until everything faded and she forgot it and it’d just be a stick she had in her room that’d always been there.
He smiled, moved the stick off to one of the lower shelves in her room, and closed the door behind him.
-
Even Reuben had to admit it wasn’t a bad school. “It definitely has a lot to offer,” he said the first time someone mentioned it to him and pressed a flyer into his hands, trying to stay as polite as he could when he saw the slogan on the front. In person it was a little better, but he knew the only reason he was here was because Laurel’s friend Charlene had agreed to watch everyone for the afternoon. If he had a choice, he’d be at work designing fountain placements – not because he liked fountain placements all that much, but because he knew that’d be better for his blood pressure. Besides, he was pretty sure James had told him keeping feelings inside caused cancer.
“As you know, we offer a wide variety of programs for all students at all levels.” Their representative dressed for his work just like James dressed for his, all but the white coat. He had a wonderful smile, even Reuben could see that; he really meant what he said about offering disadvantaged kids – and wasn’t that a great thing to say instead of ‘disabled,’ it’d probably end up as the next big buzzword – the full range of options that could be arranged for them. There were art classes, speech and physical therapists, music lessons, lots of individual education planning, and even a barber that came to cut the kids’ hair so they didn’t have to go home with buzz cuts. It was all fascinating and amazing, and for Reuben, downright nauseating. He kept smiling as politely as he could, did his best to chat as they took a short walk around the playground and lawns, peered into one of the classrooms with ten students for each one teacher.
Laurel didn’t smile much, mostly nodding, turned down the offers of coffee for them both. She stopped to take a look at the posters on the walls and the flyers stapled onto the bulletin board that would’ve fit into any other private school. “This is a big investment,” she explained.
“I understand, and I hope to see your daughter with us next year.”
“How much do you know about our daughter?” Reuben almost didn’t want to know the answer. “I mean, how much of it was explained over the phone? It just seems that –” he let out a frustrated chuckle, “–I just think this school wouldn’t be the best option for her.”
“Reuben,” Laurel hissed.
“May I ask why you think that is?”
“What you’re offering doesn’t seem –”
“We’ll talk about it,” Laurel cut him off. “Won’t we talk about it? We don’t need to take up more of your time.”
“Like you said, it’s a big investment.” He had his hands held behind his back, showing interest and respect as deliberately as anyone could ask for. “I understand if you need time to discuss us. Most parents do.”
Reuben waited until they got in the car, seatbelts fastened, to say, “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”
“No, I think they’re serious.”
“There’s no way. I mean, no way, who thought this was a good idea?”
“Aiden.”
“Fuck Aiden. How could – fuck, why would anyone think this place would be good for her?”
“Because she wanted to be generous and helpful, that’s why.”
“She’s not retarded. What would –”
“It’s handicapped now.”
“The clinical term retarded.”
“Look, let’s talk about this when we get home.”
“Fine.”
“Good.”
He stayed silent until they parked in front of Charlene’s house to say, “She’s not retarded.”
“I know.” Laurel turned off the car and leaned back in her seat.
“If they had something else…”
“I think they’ve got something for nonverbal kids.”
“She doesn’t need fucking speech therapy.”
“What does she need, then? Tell me.”
“She needs someone that knows she’s not a dog. She needs someone who’d know she’s a kid, that she needs more than blocks and dolls and needs to learn just like everyone else.”
“And where would she get that?” There was a sudden edge in Laurel’s voice.
Reuben matched it. “I don’t know. Not there, with what they’d charge we could hire someone.”
“Why don’t I just go into homeschooling her?”
“I don’t know!”
“Because I’m not qualified to teach her, and I could get qualified and take the tests and pass certification and everything, but she needs to go to school.” Her hands were gripping the steering wheel hard enough her knuckles were white. “Even if it’s a school like that if she goes to school it’s a normal thing for her and she’d know she’d be normal like everyone.”
“How bad does she need to know that?”
“Pretty damn bad.” Laurel unbuckled her belt, unlocked the doors, went to the house to get everyone, and Reuben followed, knowing this wasn’t over. Everyone was glad to see them, even though they’d only been gone three hours, and was more than ready to spend a little more time at this new place with a backyard full of totally new dirt to smell and play in and Charlene’s amazing pumpkin-swirl cookies. So they let everyone stay a bit longer, letting their kids tire themselves out, before thanking Charlene profusely and getting everyone home before it got too late for Laurel to start making dinner.
It kept going in the dark that night, spooning together under the covers. “If it was one person working with her, maybe that’d work, but she couldn’t work in a classroom.”
“It’d be good for her. Why don’t you like this idea?”
“I can’t see how it’d be good for her to be in a classroom of kids all dumber than she is.”
“It wouldn’t be, no, so we’d get her something else.”
“So what would that be?”
“That’d be one person working with her.”
“You?”
“A teacher.”
“Do they even offer that?”
“If we build a case, yeah. Did you read that part of their website?”
“I tried not to read anything.”
“We could fly her to Tel Aviv or Berlin, if you want her to get socialized.”
“Fuck no.”
“So get over your pride and fill out the forms.”
“Laurel.”
“I don’t know if you know I don’t like it either, but I don’t.” She pulled out of the spoon, kept facing away. “I like not doing anything less than I like doing this.”
Reuben rolled onto his back and started another night of staring at the ceiling until he fell asleep or gave up on trying. If this was the best they could do, it still wasn’t good enough, but the lesser of two evils was still less evil – it was a compromise for her benefit, to make things better for her, the only thing they could do right now to give her what she needed, something that was as close to what her brother and sisters would get as she could.
The bedside clock said it was too late to still be up. From Laurel’s breathing, he could tell she knew that too.
He’d gotten used to mornings with not enough sleep from the night before. They still hurt, but he got up before everyone else just the same, pulled out the cereal and hard-boiled eggs like normal, spreading butter on toast for Laurel and handed it over when she came into the kitchen. While everyone else ate at the table June swallowed her five eggs down whole and wiped her mouth on the towel hanging on the rack installed at her eye level.
Celia at work had a nephew in sort of scaled-down mainstream version of the school; she’d talked about him a couple of times. When he saw her come down the hall he almost wanted to stop her and ask for her brother’s e-mail, to have someone else in a similar situation to talk to, but decided against it. He just smiled and gave her a good morning instead.
-
They’d gone over possible strategies, they’d talked about how to coordinate pick-ups and drop-offs, they’d met with the teacher beforehand and showed up for the first class along with all of the other parents, but he still wasn’t ready to give everyone a good-bye kiss and watch Laurel buckle them all into the car to take them off. They’d resisted this for a long time: there were places that offered preschool for kids as young as two, and they both knew parents that’d gone for those. Talking to them over lunches sometimes made him feel like he’d been holding them back somehow, but at two his kids hadn’t known when to shift up or down or stay in one shape or another, and not everyone knew how to deal with kids that could do that. And legally, none of his children were required to attend school for another year.
And to be selfish, he hadn’t wanted to see them go. Sending them to school, even for just a few hours of the day, felt too much like he was handing them off, or away, or something – he knew, the way he knew the moon, that he needed to do everything he could for them as a father. He knew it, and didn’t like it when something went against his instincts.
They’d all liked their first day of school, running back and forth and playing with all the other kids, and today Laurel would be with them, and tomorrow nobody would be. Pick up, drop off, no matter what. Yesterday June had stayed with Charlene again, today Reuben pulled a sick day to spend with her, and starting tomorrow she’d spend a couple of weeks with a good chunk of the day alone with her mother. If June had any worries about everyone else going off, it didn’t show; maybe the big talk her parents gave last Saturday had done the trick. She wasn’t angry or moping right now, glad to spend some time with her Dad, jumping up and down and asking him if they could go into the backyard to play catch for a bit.
“In a little bit, okay?” The early season cider was warming up on the stove, something to brace him and help him stop worrying and not call to check every hour on the half-hour. “I want to drink this. When I’m done with the cider, we’ll play.”
She didn’t like that, but was willing to live with it, and went to wait for her Dad in the playroom. He didn’t like it either, but needed some time to sit quietly, and blew on the cider to cool it off before taking a sip. Too high a flavor; it’d be better in a month or two when the weather got a bit colder. It didn’t take him long to finish, and when he did he realized he needed to use the bathroom.
He didn’t even get a chance to close the door when he saw the state of June’s litter box. And she was worried, all right. She didn’t just forget to flush after she used it – “Fuck,” he whispered, then dropped to his knees to grab the little plastic shovel to scoop up the turds and flush them. He was almost ready to yell at her to clean it up herself, hissing curses under his breath, Goddammit she knew what to do. She’d picked up using the litter box, scooping up the turds and piss, dumping them in the toilet, and flushing them after two demonstrations, building on just using the box, she was wicked smart and deserved more than what he could give her, “Dammit, you know this, why –”
He heard her claws on the edge of the tiles; everything in her face said she was sorry. And he remembered she hadn’t gotten to sleep early last night, he’d shifted down to keep her company in bed, licking all over her face and nuzzling her close and she’d woken up early too, and – “June, I’m sorry, I thought you were mad about school –”
She wasn’t mad, she hadn’t been but she was now, “June wait,” he scrambled after her getting up onto two legs to follow her into her room. She’d closed the door and barked out she didn’t want to be disturbed but he went in anyway, and she was curled up on her bed and pouting, and if he was feeling better Reuben would have taken a picture or at least laughed because pouting in her room was the most human thing she could do after an argument. She growled she didn’t care, but he sat down at the edge of her bed anyway. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” Her ears went flat: of course he meant it. “No, I was angry, and I forgot you were tired. I shouldn’t have yelled. I know that – we both know you should clean up after yourself,” she huffed hard, “you need to remember to do it even if you’re tired. I’m sorry for getting angry and yelling. I won’t clean up after you next time, but this once it’s okay.” She pushed her face deeper into her tail. “June, look at me.” She didn’t move. “June.”
He leaned over and rubbed his nose between her ears. She had enough metaphorical shit to deal with; she didn’t need any more literal shit than was necessary. “Hey, hey,” he whispered.
She whimpered back, then looked up at him, eyes shut tight. That was her ‘I’m sorry’ whimper. “It’s okay,” she was sorry, she was sorry, “Is it about school?” Of course it was, that was it. “You don’t need to be sorry.” He wrapped his arms around her. This was the worst of it: she was bursting with words and didn’t have any to use. It’d been easier when all she needed was a warm place to sleep and a full belly, but she needed to say more things now, and every day she couldn’t say a thing was one more day everyone on both sides had to fight to understand. And she was sorry for not being able to say anything.
He remembered his brother on the mornings after full moons, eyes full of questions, nobody knowing the right words then either. At least he’d been able to use words – June would never manage even that.
“It’s okay. You heard us, you know your school’s got other kids that can’t talk, there’s going to be someone there to help.” She opened her eyes and he licked a broad stripe down her nose, promising her it’d be okay. “Do you want to play now?” Of course she did. “I’ll get changed, I’ll be right back.”
He practically threw his clothes onto the bed, shifted down, and padded over to her room, where she jumped out of bed, not quite happy but ready to follow him on a big run outside. It was early September, the sun was shining and there were almost no clouds and the air was starting to get nice and chilly, good sharp weather to keep scents fresh, and he made sure to re-raccoon-proof the yard – June pointedly looking away, good girl – before going back to play with her.
Laurel got back around three; by that time they’d run through the park sniffing everything they could, played catch in the backyard, eaten a nice big lunch of leftover goat bits, play-acted a thing about ships on the ocean or in space – he wasn’t sure which – then had a nice long nap and were finishing reading another book. She immediately ran off to play with her siblings, everyone ready to tell her about school, and Laurel plopped down next to Reuben. “So how was today?”
He glanced back at the hallway, got up to close the door, then sat back down. It still took him a bit of time to be able to get the words out. “We’ve got a year until she has to be in school.” He looked at her from the corners of his eyes. “It’ll probably take that long to do all the paperwork.”
It wasn’t quite a smile on her mouth, but there was something softer around her eyes. “Just like that?”
“Not just like that. But I can get used to it in a year.”
“A year goes just like that.”
“Yeah, yeah it does.”
He knew it’d take longer to get used to the idea, but if a year was all he had he’d make the best use of it he could.
-
The bell over the door jingled as Reuben led everyone inside; the owner worked hard to make it feel like a joint right out of the nineteen-forties and he’d managed pretty well. Home-made ice cream fresh each morning, real milk in the shakes. It’d be closing for the season in another week or two, but one last scoop of coffee wasn’t why he was here right now. Jeremy, Abby, and Susan had run up to the ice cream case immediately, slowly sounding out the names on the cards under the glass, strawberry and pumpkin easier than pistachio.
“We’ll have one scoop of pumpkin pie, one scoop of rumblemint, one scoop of maple swirl, and one scoop of coffee bean.”
“Cups or cones?”
“Cups, please.”
Jeremy tugged his sleeve. “Can I get the brown sprinkles?”
Reuben ruffled his hair. “No, they’re chocolate, we don’t eat that, remember?” He nodded under his dad’s hand. After Reuben paid for everything, handed out the orders, and got everyone over to a booth, he still waited for everyone to settle in and eat a bit before getting into what he wanted to say.
“Okay, everyone. Listen, I need to talk to you, and Susan I need your attention.” She put her spoon down. “We need to talk about June.”
“Is she sick?” Abby asked. She’d just talked to her uncle James about his job, and Reuben could slap him for not knowing how to talk to kids without making them worry.
“No, she’s fine, that’s not it. You know how she’s not going to school?” Everyone nodded. “You know why?”
“She doesn’t go up,” Jeremy answered.
“Right, she doesn’t. She can’t.” The last time he’d had a talk like this, he’d been the one eating ice cream with his brother while his dad talked about what made – what made Daniel different and why they needed to be careful about him. He closed his eyes, took another deep breath. His dad meant well, meant to do right, but it’d been almost eighteen years. He had to do better by June. “And you know there’s nothing wrong with that, right? It’s just something she can’t do, like how most people can’t shift at all.” His kids nodded; that wasn’t the whole truth, but it was enough for five-year-olds. They already knew not everyone in their class did Shabbos or Sukkot, so one more thing about what made them different wasn’t so confusing anymore.
“Well, we all know there’s nothing wrong with that, but not everyone else does.” Susan scrunched up her face. “Not everyone knows about people like June, so they don’t know to think about her as a person.”
“Like the guy on the beach?” Susan asked. Reuben blinked; he hadn’t expected them to remember the jerk.
“Yeah, like him.”
“He sucked,” Abby said.
“Language. But yes, people like him, they don’t know June like we do. And they don’t know how to – talk to her, how to act, because they don’t think they need to talk to her like she’s a person.” He sighed again. “So we need to make sure that, that we can be there for her.” Not keep her safe so much as, “We need to make sure people know there’s nothing wrong with her.”
“There isn’t,” Abby pressed.
“We know that. They don’t.” His kids were at the age that they could see the world as ‘us’ and ‘them’ and understand what it meant, and he didn’t like making that distinction but he didn’t see anything else he could do. “So we gotta be there for her. Does that make sense?” They nodded; he could tell he was just telling them things they already knew, and that they were more than ready to get back to their ice cream. He was ready to let them, but there was one more thing he had to tell them.
“You know your uncle James? That he’s my brother?” They nodded. He took a deep breath. “I have two brothers.”
-
The silversmith who made his case hadn’t gone out of business, just passed the family business down to his son, and it was still tucked away in its little building just off Times Square. Like his father, he was open to commissions and requests, such as the possibility of something for June to wear – he couldn’t give an estimate until he had a better idea of what exactly Reuben wanted, but he was open to the idea, and as soon as he got some specifics he could guess the price for the piece. Right then, Reuben let out a little sigh of relief. He always had copies of her birth certificate and social security card with him, just in case, but she’d need something of her own when he wasn’t around. And in case the medical ID jewelry wasn’t flexible enough to accommodate her, she’d need something else.
He hummed quietly as he closed the website, shut off the computer’s screen, and headed to the break room for the rest of his lunch hour when his phone rang again. “Hello?” Without the number ID on his cell he wouldn’t have been able to tell it was his mother; she was so frantic he still couldn’t believe it was her. “Hold on, Mom. Calm down. What’s wrong?” He had to wait a moment, then she started up again. “Wait, could you say that again? What?” He almost caught what she said that time. “Mom, who came home?”
They wound up at the kitchen table not much later, not talking or eating, just sitting across from each other. Reuben ended up breaking the silence, saying to Laurel what he’d wanted to say to June, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t. We couldn’t have tested for it.” They’d run the gamut of screenings before they’d gotten engaged, going all the way down the list in alphabetical order, and some things could turn up in a laboratory and some things couldn’t.
“Laurel, I swear I wouldn’t.”
“Don’t. Don’t blame yourself. It’s happened in my family too.”
“I mean, it runs in my family – what’s James say, first-degree relative or something? You know my brother’s –”
“Rueben, stop.”
“If I’d known anyone would be at risk for it, I wouldn’t…”
“Stop. Just stop.” She took her forehead in her hands, elbows on the counter, the best possible way to keep her head up and not look him in the eye. “This is going to be –” She sighed and started again. “We don’t need you blaming yourself. I know you want to but please don’t. This is going to be hard enough without that.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, not knowing something else to use. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.” She moved to sit next to him, picked up and draped his arm around her as she put her arms around him. “It’s okay.”
“Please don’t promise me.”
“It’s going to be okay.” He shook his head, not knowing why she thought it would, why she was so fine with all this. “It’s going to be fine, Reuben. She’s a gorgeous little girl, she’s so bright and smart, she’s got the best parents and littermates and grandparents in the world and she’s going to be okay. We’ll be okay.”
“You, you don’t,” he started. She cut him off right away.
“No, Reuben. Whatever it is, she’s my daughter, and I’m not going to not do anything if it means not helping her.” She held him tighter. “And that includes feeling sorry for her. Reuben, look at me.” He did, and didn’t see anything to tell him otherwise. “Reuben, I promise I’ll do whatever I can to make sure things turn out good for her.”
“Okay.”
“I need to hear you say that.”
“I promise,” swallowing down his fears and memories, “I promise I’ll do whatever I can for her.”
“Thank you.” She didn’t kiss him, pressing her face against his neck, taking in one breath after another; he buried his nose in her hair and pulled her in closer. He wanted to say she didn’t know what it was like living with someone like June or his brother, how hard it was even when people knew about the condition, but wanted to keep holding her more. So he did, until she tugged him back into bed, where they managed to sleep the last couple of hours until morning, and Laurel could finally shift down to feed everyone.
Reuben sat on the floor with everyone, and scratched Laurel’s ears while their children ate; she sighed and twitched her tail. “Can’t wait for them to wean.” She growled lightly at that; of course she couldn’t. “Solids are going to be a barrel of fun.” She whined, asking him to come in close, and rewarded him for his trouble with a big lick from his chin to his forehead. Grimacing, wiping it off, “Oh, you think you’re so funny now.” She huffed out a laugh and turned her attention back to the kids, and he went back to her ears.
He waited for everyone to be finished and her to shift back up to say, “We’re gonna have to tell our parents eventually.”
She pulled her dress on and went to the kitchen to heat up something. “How about tonight?”
“Yeah, I think I can do that.” Maybe shell-shocked was the best attitude for dealing with this. “Should I call mine first?”
“Probably.”
“They should be home now, but I’ll wait a little while.”
“Might as well. You’ve got a half-day at work, right?”
“All this week and next, then it’s back to full-time. Benefits of senior staff.”
“I’ve gotta get me some of that.”
“You’re a mother. It’s the most senior staff there is.”
-
Reuben knew there was a life before children the same way he knew he’d been an infant: there was proof in the form of eyewitness reports and photographs documentation, and there were vague memories of what had happened, but it didn’t seem real compared to what was happening right now. He guessed, and evidence backed him up, that sleep deprivation and changing diapers and chasing after babies that’d shifted down because they didn’t want to crawl when the could run did a good job of that. Plain and simple, there wasn’t time for him to think about what had happened to his life anymore. If it was a good day, there’d be a few minutes here and there, usually in the shower, but there was too much to worry about and deal with to spend much time contemplating anything. There were too many things that had him smiling when he didn’t mean it, just to keep looking polite, because he knew it wouldn’t do him any good to lose his patience with a total stranger, or worse, someone that had something he needed.
He’d gotten another set of cards printed up – two, actually, one for everyday questions and one just for the ones about June – and they did their job, and getting to know people and make the effort to make friends with them was a little effort that went a long way. But he couldn’t speak to the same people every time he made a call or showed up at the pharmacy, and it didn’t take long for explaining the same things over and over became tiresome instead of irritating or angering. Like today, when he had to duck out of a meeting twenty minutes early because some assistant needed to call him because Laurel’s word wasn’t enough.
He made sure to close his office’s door and take a deep breath before picking the call back up. “Sorry about that. Yes, Reuben Wilson here, what can I do for you?”
“Well, I’m calling on behalf of Dr. Shultz and the appointments you made for next week.”
“The two-month immunizations. What about them?”
“It says here that you’ve set three appointments, but you have four children.”
“Yes, and?”
“I wanted to make sure this wasn’t in error and that you meant four appointments.”
He swore he could hear Caroline’s faint little smile, the exact one he knew to hate from experience, the one that said he’d forgotten he had a fourth child. In terms of smiles he’d learned to hate, it was better than the one that said his daughter was a dog. He sighed, pushed the heel of his free hand against his eye to ward off an incoming headache and resist the temptation to ask if she was new. “No, I meant three. June’s not getting her shots with Dr. Shultz.”
“Oh. I see.”
He sighed again. “I assure you she’s getting her immunizations, and that everything will be up to federal standards and regulations. She just won’t be getting them in your offices.”
“May I ask where she’ll be getting them?”
“No, you may not.” Talking on the phone did have its perks, like being able to grin like an asshole and still sound polite and apologetic. “Is that all?”
“Yes, I believe it is.”
“Thank you.” Reuben didn’t wait to end the call, beeping her away. He took a moment to sit at his desk, stare at the walls, and not think. There were plenty of other parents in the office that he could talk to for most things – Joyce had just gotten back from her own maternity leave last week, and they’d spent nearly twenty minutes talking about bottles, just bottles – but he was the only person he knew of that had to make his daughter’s appointments with a veterinarian. Laurel had spent almost three days calling every vet within driving distance to see if any of them were willing and able to accept what she were asking about, and had been prepared to go as far as New York City itself if that was what it took. She’d finally found a private practice just under an hour away with good traffic, and Reuben pulled his last sick day for the year to drive June over and check Heckl out.
Her waiting room set the tone for the visit before she stepped in: he knew she’d designed the place for the benefit of owners, not parents, but the fact that there wasn’t anything cute or obnoxious on the walls and magazines about things besides domestic animals went a long way towards helping him get over the feeling of failure over having to be here. When her assistant called him to the back and she was ready and waiting for them, but took the time to give him a hefty handshake and say hello before re-sterilizing to examine June, he found himself relaxing even more, and realized she was the best possible choice when June let herself be picked up. “She doesn’t usually do that,” he explained when Heckl said out loud how cooperative her new patient was. “She’s usually fussy about who holds her.”
“Well. I’m really glad you’re letting me hold you, then. Thank you, June, and how are you feeling today? Let me check your ears, this won’t hurt, it’ll be cold but it won’t hurt.” Heckl really knew what she was doing, and kept talking to June instead of at her, not with baby-talk either, and Reuben would’ve been willing to hire her for that alone.
“Have you worked with werewolves before?”
“Yes, four in the years I was with the animal hospital, but you’re the first in my own practice.” She didn’t look up from running a finger over June’s gums and milk teeth.
“And, ah, how long were you with the animal hospital?”
It must’ve been a good time, because that got a smile into her eyes. “Almost twelve years.”
“Well, I can’t say I hope for many more to come your way, but if any do, they’ll be lucky.”
“I appreciate that, thank you.”
-
Whenever he thought about it, Reuben knew it was a waste of time to have kids one after another instead of all at once, and that it’d be kind of boring. Everyone in his family had grown up as part of a litter – the only exception he could think of was his father’s aunt Nina, who’d converted to marry great-uncle George in the early nineteen twenties. He’d have to call one of his brothers-in-law to check, but as far as he knew, it was just her. Otherwise, it was universally litters, always having someone around with you, sharing toys and clothes, birthday cakes and teachers and plans to sneak out of the house at night. Besides, it always seemed a lot easier to grow up all at the same time. Karl sometimes talked about him and his wife having a third kid, and Reuben had to smile polity at that, thinking about how awful it’d been for Laurel in the last couple of months and how it was nice to not to have to go through pregnancy more than once.
Still, he had to concede it’d be easier to coordinate trips and outings for him and Laurel if all four of his children weren’t at the stage when they needed to be watched all the time. If, say, Jeremy and Susan could be decently self-occupying, or old enough for preschool, at the very least going grocery shopping wouldn’t be so hard. Most of the time he and Laurel switched off and one or the other went out on a Sunday to get all the errands done, which doubled as a bit of time alone, but Jeremy didn’t want to nap today and June was hungrier than ever and Abby was going through a phase where she spent as much time shifted down as she could – which was why Reuben had Susan with him today in the produce section. He didn’t know why she was being so well-behaved, but he was willing to reward it with a trip out of the house.
Toting her carrier and diaper bag, pushing the shopping cart, stopping to grab oatmeal, apples, baby-safe non-scented detergent, toothpaste, milk, butter, cucumbers, canned tomatoes, plus doubling back across the store to grab some dental floss and then back to get some canned pumpkin, was tricky to balance but fairly straightforward, and it had to be put to a stop when she realized she was hungry and he had to push everything over to the in-store eating area to get a place to sit down to feed her. She was hungry enough it didn’t take long, and for the millionth time he was thankful all his kids had taken to bottles without fuss. New moons just wouldn’t be possible for Laurel anymore without them.
“Up you go,” he set the towel in place and hefted her up to his shoulder. “Here we are, come on, make your daddy proud, gimme a good – yep, there we go,” the smell of spit-up the same as ever, that sleek sour-sweet scent that only came from the all-milk meals. “There we are, you’ve got more? Oh, don’t tell me there’s still some left, get it out, come on, no? Okay, but you’re staying up there just in case.”
If nothing else, it was nice to sit for a while. He still needed to visit the butcher’s and the pet store – something they’d need to euphemize, or just get the stuff ordered online – plus the hardware store, they needed more light bulbs, and he was about to call Laurel to check if he’d missed writing anything down when someone started to coo at Susan behind his back. That someone turned out to be a girl who looked like she was fresh into college, hiding fake-colored hair behind oversized glasses and wearing a too-gaudy-for-a-grandmother sweater – is that was people that age were wearing these days, and did he have to be worried about that and worse in eighteen years?
“Hey baby, hey baby, who’s a good girl, who’s a good girl?”
“Hello,” he said carefully.
“Your daughter is so cute,” she smiled. “Ah, baby, who’s a cute baby-baby.”
“Thank you.” Turning around to face her, “Her name’s Susan.”
“Susan, what a sweet name. Peek-a-boo!” She hid behind her hands, popping out from behind them two more times before she realized Susan wasn’t responding. “Uh, peek-a-boo?”
Reuben smiled; this was too good. “Oh, we don’t play peek-a-boo.”
“Sorry?”
“It doesn’t work for us. We don’t play it.”
“How…I thought everyone played it. Even, like, people in Australia.”
He grinned. “Well, she can smell you, so she knows if you’re still in the room and just hiding behind a chair or your hands. The, oh, object permanence is something she already knows.”
The girl kept blinking. “Object…she can smell me?”
“Yeah,” he fumbled a bit before pulling out the case – silver polish, that’s right, not on the list but he needed it for the menorah – and flipped it open and handed over a card one-handed. “We’re werewolves. Here you go.”
“Uh?”
Pointing to the card with the case, “That should explain everything.”
“Uh, thanks. I, ah.”
“Wave bye-bye, Susan.” She gurgled low and sharp, telling him she hadn’t liked the girl either. He could probably blame the glasses, definitely blame the casual fear, and kept waving her hand for her. “Wave bye-bye to the little scared lady, bye-bye.”
-
When she saw what he was washing, Abby took a detour over to the sink. “Chicken bits! Can I have some?”
Reuben grinned and turned off the tap, shaking the organs dry before patting them with a paper towel to get the last membranes off. “No, these are for June. You asked for egg salad, remember?”
“Oh.” She thought for a moment before asking, “Can I still have a piece?”
“Sorry, no.” He sealed them up in a plastic baggie and put them into the cooler with the rest of lunch. “Could you go help your mother get the toys ready, please?”
No one could sigh like a four-year-old. “Okay.”
It wasn’t a long drive to Pelham Park in terms of time spent or miles covered, but it was if there were four four-year-olds that needed something to do for every moment of it – which was why he and Laurel spent the whole week planning this daytrip. He could hear her debating about plastic shovels with Susan and Abby, arguing against small trucks with Jeremy, and telling June to go ask her father about it. He was putting the pears in the cooler when she padded into the kitchen with her ears straight up and a doll held tight between her teeth.
“She wants to take it with us!” Laurel yelled.
“Sorry, sweetie.” He crouched down to tug it gently from her; she didn’t let go, just held on gently, dipping her head up and down. “She’d get all wet, and we’d have to put her back in the wash, and she wouldn’t taste good. Could you put her away? We’re leaving soon.” He let go; June pulled her ears flat to the sides and let out a snort before trotting back to her room to put her doll away. She was back a moment later with one of her old wooden teething rods, and he had to turn that one down too, and only got her a little better promising there’d be plenty of stuff to play with once they got there. “We’re bringing plenty of toys for everyone, you don’t need to bring yours.”
She wasn’t satisfied with that, and spent most of the drive sulking in the station wagon’s rumble seat, even with Jeremy back there with her to keep her company. Nobody was happy during the drive, sulking and annoyed for one reason or a hundred others including being four years old, not until they got to the parking lot and they realized how close they were to so much water ready and waiting for them. It was a small miracle they were patient enough for the day’s first sunscreen application.
“Okay, everyone!” Reuben stared at everyone assembled in the shade of the car. “Beach rules: no scent-rolling, if you want to shift up or down let me or your mom know and do it in one of the booths, when we say it’s time to go it’s time to go, don’t eat anything we didn’t bring, we’re not buying anyone ice cream so don’t ask, wait twenty minutes after lunch to get back in the water, and if you’re shifted up you need sunscreen.” He watched the information sink in. “And we’re here to have fun, everybody, so let’s get in the water! Come on!”
It took a bit more than that for everyone to take off running – setting up beach camp, for one, but it still took less than ten minutes between parking the car and everyone getting wet. Susan was the first to dunk herself, swimming lessons paying off, Jeremy and Reuben running in behind, June and Abby hanging back in the waves and splashing each other and Laurel dipping her feet in before setting up the towels for a bit of sunbathing and reading. When she found a big green piece of beach glass Susan started hunting it down, running over to Reuben whenever she found a new piece so he could put it in his pockets; he took every bit and kept getting splashed by Jeremy and waved to Laurel, who went back to half-reading and half-watching Abby and June digging in the wet sand, jumping back to watch the waves melt the holes away, and go back to digging. The toys came out a little bit after that, big plastic birthday presents finally getting broken in, and everyone agreed this was time to get some real digging done, and some real building too.
All they made was a huge lump that couldn’t be called a tower or even a pyramid without being overly generous, but they kept putting more and more sand on, noticing the wettest parts slide down the sides and pushing dry sand against the bottom to hold it up. Watching all of his kids working together to do something without him, without any help, made Reuben’s heart sing as they went.
The lump was still standing proud, if somewhat less tall, when Laurel called everyone for lunch. She started taking the food out of the cooler, one bag at a time, “Chicken for Abby, egg for Susan, bits for June, chicken for Jeremy, hummus for Dad and egg for me.” She handed out the sandwiches, pulled a little collapsible silicone bowl out of her bag and poured in June’s lunch, and everyone sat on the beach and didn’t bother with napkins.
It was the perfect afternoon until some beach bum in sandals and an open shirt walked by with his dog, which took one sniff of June’s expensive, organic, free-range chicken organs and started barking loud enough for something four times its size. Little dogs always annoyed Reuben, and he glared at the owner, trying to quiet the fuzzball and seemed to be doing his best. June didn’t do anything flashy or dramatic, just what came naturally to a four-year-old kid who was bugged by someone else: tell them to buzz off. It just so happened June’s way of doing that was to drop her ears, pull her lips back from her teeth, and growl low in her throat, planting her feet and all twenty-eight pounds of pure muscle behind her statement.
He knew he shouldn’t, but Reuben smiled anyway at how fast the fuzzball shut up.
“Dude, get that thing a leash.”
“What?” Everyone stared at the guy who held his dog a little closer.
“At least I’ve got mine on a leash. You know what, I’m calling the –”
“Look, this is,” Reuben reached over to Laurel’s bag, pulled out his case, “I think this is a simple misunderstanding. Here, this should clear things up.” He walked over and held out one of June’s cards; the guy glanced over it, to June, at Reuben, then back to the card. Reuben waved at everyone to stay sitting down and could hear Laurel distributing the pears for dessert, offering to slice them up. He stood his ground, crossed his arms over his chest, and kept staring right at the guy’s face, waiting for him to make eye contact. It took him a while, but the guy managed. “So does that clear it up?”
“Fine.” He didn’t even bother with a smile, just went back to his walk along the beach. Everyone was well into dessert, glad to have the guy gone and forgetting about him as soon as they hit the water again, but Reuben held back with Laurel. He couldn’t shake the way the man had looked at them once he’d read the card, worse than the way he’d first looked at June. He almost wanted to shift down and do something worth jail time, but pushed that aside and chatted with Laurel about her book before encouraging her to go play in the sand for a bit, putting on a good face for his family. So he played in the sand and took Abby’s suit when she wanted to shift down for a bit and helped her back into it when she shifted up for the drive home, helped Susan pick out the three best pieces of glass, agreed that Jeremy had outsplashed him, and told June it was a very good stick she’d found and it’d look good in her room.
On good days it was a fight to get his kids into the shower – they’d done their best to skip baths for good reason – and today it was worse than usual, Jeremy putting up the biggest fuss even after the long day. “But I wanna smell like the beach!”
“I know, I do too, a lot of people do, but you need to take a shower anyway.”
“Why?”
“Well, see…you won’t smell like the beach tomorrow, and it’s important you get clean right now.”
“Why can’t I keep it?”
“You already know the answer. Do you want me to give you the real answer or a fake one?”
“I want to remember the beach.”
“Jeremy,” he crouched down to look him eye-to-eye, “You don’t need smells to remember things. I know they’re good, and they help so much, but we can remember things without our noses.” Jeremy made the face that said he knew his dad was right and didn’t like it. “Come on. You need to get clean to start the day fresh tomorrow.”
“So I can get clean tomorrow.” One last argument.
“No, well, no, you need to get clean now.” He kept pouting, but got into the shower and let his dad turn the water on without much more out of him. Abby and Susan were already in pajamas, thanks to Laurel and their master bathroom, so June followed Jeremy and let her dad help her wash the day out of her fur, closed her eyes and almost purred when he toweled her off, wagging fit to throw her tail off.
She was already asleep when he came to check on her. She’d dropped her stick right at the edge of her bed – a double-firm well-blanketed futon – and Reuben ran his hand down her back and picked it up to look at its grooves, the ones thrown smooth by the waves and fresh-made from her jaws. All she needed to do was give it a lick and she’d taste the saltwater, the sun and the wind, bits of sand and tired sounds, and she’d be right back at the beach for as long as the stick let her remember the day, until everything faded and she forgot it and it’d just be a stick she had in her room that’d always been there.
He smiled, moved the stick off to one of the lower shelves in her room, and closed the door behind him.
-
Even Reuben had to admit it wasn’t a bad school. “It definitely has a lot to offer,” he said the first time someone mentioned it to him and pressed a flyer into his hands, trying to stay as polite as he could when he saw the slogan on the front. In person it was a little better, but he knew the only reason he was here was because Laurel’s friend Charlene had agreed to watch everyone for the afternoon. If he had a choice, he’d be at work designing fountain placements – not because he liked fountain placements all that much, but because he knew that’d be better for his blood pressure. Besides, he was pretty sure James had told him keeping feelings inside caused cancer.
“As you know, we offer a wide variety of programs for all students at all levels.” Their representative dressed for his work just like James dressed for his, all but the white coat. He had a wonderful smile, even Reuben could see that; he really meant what he said about offering disadvantaged kids – and wasn’t that a great thing to say instead of ‘disabled,’ it’d probably end up as the next big buzzword – the full range of options that could be arranged for them. There were art classes, speech and physical therapists, music lessons, lots of individual education planning, and even a barber that came to cut the kids’ hair so they didn’t have to go home with buzz cuts. It was all fascinating and amazing, and for Reuben, downright nauseating. He kept smiling as politely as he could, did his best to chat as they took a short walk around the playground and lawns, peered into one of the classrooms with ten students for each one teacher.
Laurel didn’t smile much, mostly nodding, turned down the offers of coffee for them both. She stopped to take a look at the posters on the walls and the flyers stapled onto the bulletin board that would’ve fit into any other private school. “This is a big investment,” she explained.
“I understand, and I hope to see your daughter with us next year.”
“How much do you know about our daughter?” Reuben almost didn’t want to know the answer. “I mean, how much of it was explained over the phone? It just seems that –” he let out a frustrated chuckle, “–I just think this school wouldn’t be the best option for her.”
“Reuben,” Laurel hissed.
“May I ask why you think that is?”
“What you’re offering doesn’t seem –”
“We’ll talk about it,” Laurel cut him off. “Won’t we talk about it? We don’t need to take up more of your time.”
“Like you said, it’s a big investment.” He had his hands held behind his back, showing interest and respect as deliberately as anyone could ask for. “I understand if you need time to discuss us. Most parents do.”
Reuben waited until they got in the car, seatbelts fastened, to say, “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”
“No, I think they’re serious.”
“There’s no way. I mean, no way, who thought this was a good idea?”
“Aiden.”
“Fuck Aiden. How could – fuck, why would anyone think this place would be good for her?”
“Because she wanted to be generous and helpful, that’s why.”
“She’s not retarded. What would –”
“It’s handicapped now.”
“The clinical term retarded.”
“Look, let’s talk about this when we get home.”
“Fine.”
“Good.”
He stayed silent until they parked in front of Charlene’s house to say, “She’s not retarded.”
“I know.” Laurel turned off the car and leaned back in her seat.
“If they had something else…”
“I think they’ve got something for nonverbal kids.”
“She doesn’t need fucking speech therapy.”
“What does she need, then? Tell me.”
“She needs someone that knows she’s not a dog. She needs someone who’d know she’s a kid, that she needs more than blocks and dolls and needs to learn just like everyone else.”
“And where would she get that?” There was a sudden edge in Laurel’s voice.
Reuben matched it. “I don’t know. Not there, with what they’d charge we could hire someone.”
“Why don’t I just go into homeschooling her?”
“I don’t know!”
“Because I’m not qualified to teach her, and I could get qualified and take the tests and pass certification and everything, but she needs to go to school.” Her hands were gripping the steering wheel hard enough her knuckles were white. “Even if it’s a school like that if she goes to school it’s a normal thing for her and she’d know she’d be normal like everyone.”
“How bad does she need to know that?”
“Pretty damn bad.” Laurel unbuckled her belt, unlocked the doors, went to the house to get everyone, and Reuben followed, knowing this wasn’t over. Everyone was glad to see them, even though they’d only been gone three hours, and was more than ready to spend a little more time at this new place with a backyard full of totally new dirt to smell and play in and Charlene’s amazing pumpkin-swirl cookies. So they let everyone stay a bit longer, letting their kids tire themselves out, before thanking Charlene profusely and getting everyone home before it got too late for Laurel to start making dinner.
It kept going in the dark that night, spooning together under the covers. “If it was one person working with her, maybe that’d work, but she couldn’t work in a classroom.”
“It’d be good for her. Why don’t you like this idea?”
“I can’t see how it’d be good for her to be in a classroom of kids all dumber than she is.”
“It wouldn’t be, no, so we’d get her something else.”
“So what would that be?”
“That’d be one person working with her.”
“You?”
“A teacher.”
“Do they even offer that?”
“If we build a case, yeah. Did you read that part of their website?”
“I tried not to read anything.”
“We could fly her to Tel Aviv or Berlin, if you want her to get socialized.”
“Fuck no.”
“So get over your pride and fill out the forms.”
“Laurel.”
“I don’t know if you know I don’t like it either, but I don’t.” She pulled out of the spoon, kept facing away. “I like not doing anything less than I like doing this.”
Reuben rolled onto his back and started another night of staring at the ceiling until he fell asleep or gave up on trying. If this was the best they could do, it still wasn’t good enough, but the lesser of two evils was still less evil – it was a compromise for her benefit, to make things better for her, the only thing they could do right now to give her what she needed, something that was as close to what her brother and sisters would get as she could.
The bedside clock said it was too late to still be up. From Laurel’s breathing, he could tell she knew that too.
He’d gotten used to mornings with not enough sleep from the night before. They still hurt, but he got up before everyone else just the same, pulled out the cereal and hard-boiled eggs like normal, spreading butter on toast for Laurel and handed it over when she came into the kitchen. While everyone else ate at the table June swallowed her five eggs down whole and wiped her mouth on the towel hanging on the rack installed at her eye level.
Celia at work had a nephew in sort of scaled-down mainstream version of the school; she’d talked about him a couple of times. When he saw her come down the hall he almost wanted to stop her and ask for her brother’s e-mail, to have someone else in a similar situation to talk to, but decided against it. He just smiled and gave her a good morning instead.
-
They’d gone over possible strategies, they’d talked about how to coordinate pick-ups and drop-offs, they’d met with the teacher beforehand and showed up for the first class along with all of the other parents, but he still wasn’t ready to give everyone a good-bye kiss and watch Laurel buckle them all into the car to take them off. They’d resisted this for a long time: there were places that offered preschool for kids as young as two, and they both knew parents that’d gone for those. Talking to them over lunches sometimes made him feel like he’d been holding them back somehow, but at two his kids hadn’t known when to shift up or down or stay in one shape or another, and not everyone knew how to deal with kids that could do that. And legally, none of his children were required to attend school for another year.
And to be selfish, he hadn’t wanted to see them go. Sending them to school, even for just a few hours of the day, felt too much like he was handing them off, or away, or something – he knew, the way he knew the moon, that he needed to do everything he could for them as a father. He knew it, and didn’t like it when something went against his instincts.
They’d all liked their first day of school, running back and forth and playing with all the other kids, and today Laurel would be with them, and tomorrow nobody would be. Pick up, drop off, no matter what. Yesterday June had stayed with Charlene again, today Reuben pulled a sick day to spend with her, and starting tomorrow she’d spend a couple of weeks with a good chunk of the day alone with her mother. If June had any worries about everyone else going off, it didn’t show; maybe the big talk her parents gave last Saturday had done the trick. She wasn’t angry or moping right now, glad to spend some time with her Dad, jumping up and down and asking him if they could go into the backyard to play catch for a bit.
“In a little bit, okay?” The early season cider was warming up on the stove, something to brace him and help him stop worrying and not call to check every hour on the half-hour. “I want to drink this. When I’m done with the cider, we’ll play.”
She didn’t like that, but was willing to live with it, and went to wait for her Dad in the playroom. He didn’t like it either, but needed some time to sit quietly, and blew on the cider to cool it off before taking a sip. Too high a flavor; it’d be better in a month or two when the weather got a bit colder. It didn’t take him long to finish, and when he did he realized he needed to use the bathroom.
He didn’t even get a chance to close the door when he saw the state of June’s litter box. And she was worried, all right. She didn’t just forget to flush after she used it – “Fuck,” he whispered, then dropped to his knees to grab the little plastic shovel to scoop up the turds and flush them. He was almost ready to yell at her to clean it up herself, hissing curses under his breath, Goddammit she knew what to do. She’d picked up using the litter box, scooping up the turds and piss, dumping them in the toilet, and flushing them after two demonstrations, building on just using the box, she was wicked smart and deserved more than what he could give her, “Dammit, you know this, why –”
He heard her claws on the edge of the tiles; everything in her face said she was sorry. And he remembered she hadn’t gotten to sleep early last night, he’d shifted down to keep her company in bed, licking all over her face and nuzzling her close and she’d woken up early too, and – “June, I’m sorry, I thought you were mad about school –”
She wasn’t mad, she hadn’t been but she was now, “June wait,” he scrambled after her getting up onto two legs to follow her into her room. She’d closed the door and barked out she didn’t want to be disturbed but he went in anyway, and she was curled up on her bed and pouting, and if he was feeling better Reuben would have taken a picture or at least laughed because pouting in her room was the most human thing she could do after an argument. She growled she didn’t care, but he sat down at the edge of her bed anyway. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” Her ears went flat: of course he meant it. “No, I was angry, and I forgot you were tired. I shouldn’t have yelled. I know that – we both know you should clean up after yourself,” she huffed hard, “you need to remember to do it even if you’re tired. I’m sorry for getting angry and yelling. I won’t clean up after you next time, but this once it’s okay.” She pushed her face deeper into her tail. “June, look at me.” She didn’t move. “June.”
He leaned over and rubbed his nose between her ears. She had enough metaphorical shit to deal with; she didn’t need any more literal shit than was necessary. “Hey, hey,” he whispered.
She whimpered back, then looked up at him, eyes shut tight. That was her ‘I’m sorry’ whimper. “It’s okay,” she was sorry, she was sorry, “Is it about school?” Of course it was, that was it. “You don’t need to be sorry.” He wrapped his arms around her. This was the worst of it: she was bursting with words and didn’t have any to use. It’d been easier when all she needed was a warm place to sleep and a full belly, but she needed to say more things now, and every day she couldn’t say a thing was one more day everyone on both sides had to fight to understand. And she was sorry for not being able to say anything.
He remembered his brother on the mornings after full moons, eyes full of questions, nobody knowing the right words then either. At least he’d been able to use words – June would never manage even that.
“It’s okay. You heard us, you know your school’s got other kids that can’t talk, there’s going to be someone there to help.” She opened her eyes and he licked a broad stripe down her nose, promising her it’d be okay. “Do you want to play now?” Of course she did. “I’ll get changed, I’ll be right back.”
He practically threw his clothes onto the bed, shifted down, and padded over to her room, where she jumped out of bed, not quite happy but ready to follow him on a big run outside. It was early September, the sun was shining and there were almost no clouds and the air was starting to get nice and chilly, good sharp weather to keep scents fresh, and he made sure to re-raccoon-proof the yard – June pointedly looking away, good girl – before going back to play with her.
Laurel got back around three; by that time they’d run through the park sniffing everything they could, played catch in the backyard, eaten a nice big lunch of leftover goat bits, play-acted a thing about ships on the ocean or in space – he wasn’t sure which – then had a nice long nap and were finishing reading another book. She immediately ran off to play with her siblings, everyone ready to tell her about school, and Laurel plopped down next to Reuben. “So how was today?”
He glanced back at the hallway, got up to close the door, then sat back down. It still took him a bit of time to be able to get the words out. “We’ve got a year until she has to be in school.” He looked at her from the corners of his eyes. “It’ll probably take that long to do all the paperwork.”
It wasn’t quite a smile on her mouth, but there was something softer around her eyes. “Just like that?”
“Not just like that. But I can get used to it in a year.”
“A year goes just like that.”
“Yeah, yeah it does.”
He knew it’d take longer to get used to the idea, but if a year was all he had he’d make the best use of it he could.
-
The bell over the door jingled as Reuben led everyone inside; the owner worked hard to make it feel like a joint right out of the nineteen-forties and he’d managed pretty well. Home-made ice cream fresh each morning, real milk in the shakes. It’d be closing for the season in another week or two, but one last scoop of coffee wasn’t why he was here right now. Jeremy, Abby, and Susan had run up to the ice cream case immediately, slowly sounding out the names on the cards under the glass, strawberry and pumpkin easier than pistachio.
“We’ll have one scoop of pumpkin pie, one scoop of rumblemint, one scoop of maple swirl, and one scoop of coffee bean.”
“Cups or cones?”
“Cups, please.”
Jeremy tugged his sleeve. “Can I get the brown sprinkles?”
Reuben ruffled his hair. “No, they’re chocolate, we don’t eat that, remember?” He nodded under his dad’s hand. After Reuben paid for everything, handed out the orders, and got everyone over to a booth, he still waited for everyone to settle in and eat a bit before getting into what he wanted to say.
“Okay, everyone. Listen, I need to talk to you, and Susan I need your attention.” She put her spoon down. “We need to talk about June.”
“Is she sick?” Abby asked. She’d just talked to her uncle James about his job, and Reuben could slap him for not knowing how to talk to kids without making them worry.
“No, she’s fine, that’s not it. You know how she’s not going to school?” Everyone nodded. “You know why?”
“She doesn’t go up,” Jeremy answered.
“Right, she doesn’t. She can’t.” The last time he’d had a talk like this, he’d been the one eating ice cream with his brother while his dad talked about what made – what made Daniel different and why they needed to be careful about him. He closed his eyes, took another deep breath. His dad meant well, meant to do right, but it’d been almost eighteen years. He had to do better by June. “And you know there’s nothing wrong with that, right? It’s just something she can’t do, like how most people can’t shift at all.” His kids nodded; that wasn’t the whole truth, but it was enough for five-year-olds. They already knew not everyone in their class did Shabbos or Sukkot, so one more thing about what made them different wasn’t so confusing anymore.
“Well, we all know there’s nothing wrong with that, but not everyone else does.” Susan scrunched up her face. “Not everyone knows about people like June, so they don’t know to think about her as a person.”
“Like the guy on the beach?” Susan asked. Reuben blinked; he hadn’t expected them to remember the jerk.
“Yeah, like him.”
“He sucked,” Abby said.
“Language. But yes, people like him, they don’t know June like we do. And they don’t know how to – talk to her, how to act, because they don’t think they need to talk to her like she’s a person.” He sighed again. “So we need to make sure that, that we can be there for her.” Not keep her safe so much as, “We need to make sure people know there’s nothing wrong with her.”
“There isn’t,” Abby pressed.
“We know that. They don’t.” His kids were at the age that they could see the world as ‘us’ and ‘them’ and understand what it meant, and he didn’t like making that distinction but he didn’t see anything else he could do. “So we gotta be there for her. Does that make sense?” They nodded; he could tell he was just telling them things they already knew, and that they were more than ready to get back to their ice cream. He was ready to let them, but there was one more thing he had to tell them.
“You know your uncle James? That he’s my brother?” They nodded. He took a deep breath. “I have two brothers.”
-
The silversmith who made his case hadn’t gone out of business, just passed the family business down to his son, and it was still tucked away in its little building just off Times Square. Like his father, he was open to commissions and requests, such as the possibility of something for June to wear – he couldn’t give an estimate until he had a better idea of what exactly Reuben wanted, but he was open to the idea, and as soon as he got some specifics he could guess the price for the piece. Right then, Reuben let out a little sigh of relief. He always had copies of her birth certificate and social security card with him, just in case, but she’d need something of her own when he wasn’t around. And in case the medical ID jewelry wasn’t flexible enough to accommodate her, she’d need something else.
He hummed quietly as he closed the website, shut off the computer’s screen, and headed to the break room for the rest of his lunch hour when his phone rang again. “Hello?” Without the number ID on his cell he wouldn’t have been able to tell it was his mother; she was so frantic he still couldn’t believe it was her. “Hold on, Mom. Calm down. What’s wrong?” He had to wait a moment, then she started up again. “Wait, could you say that again? What?” He almost caught what she said that time. “Mom, who came home?”
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Good job.
ETA: I'm sorry, I don't know how I missed the first part of this. Going back to read it now.
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This is a pure tangent, but I'm so happy they gave their kids non-matching names.
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So. Just awesomely lovely. Housefic for grownups, for the ever-loving win.
*mems*
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(And I have to ask: Aunt Nina and Uncle George...? ;) )